The Influence Of Tolerance Of Ambiguity On Learning Strategies Of Listening Comprehension

Confronted with great differences between the target language and their mother tongue, learners are caught in a highly uncertain mental state frequently and tend to be anxious and less motivated. When learning a foreign language, learners exhibit distinct individual differences in personality, motivation, affective states, learning styles, etc., which take a great amount of responsibility for the differences in their language learning achievements. As an affective factor, tolerance of ambiguity has been found to have a noticeable influence on second language acquisition (Naiman, Frohlich & Todesco, 1978; Chapelle & Roberts, 1986; Ely, 1989; McLain 1993). Tolerance of ambiguity is a learning model, which is also a reflection of learners'personality, referring to an attitude learners show when facing ambiguous, unfamiliar and skeptical materials or objects. This attitude covers different levels from initiative acceptance to passive resistance.The present study aims at exploring the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and their learning strategies of listening comprehension. Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale and Listening Strategy Use Questionnaire are selected to assess the level of tolerance of ambiguity of all the participants and their strategy uses respectively. After that, statistical analyses are conducted with SPSS, Version 14.0. Based on the statistical analyses mentioned above, the following conclusions are obtained: There is a significant and positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and college students'learning strategies of listening comprehension.